White Chrysanthemum
by Mirune Keishiko
Summary: The Okashira, the opium woman, and death. [oneshot]


**A/N.**  FYI, this is a oneshot, minna-dono, independent of my ongoing "Mune no Monogatari."

_Regarding the revision_:  Reread this shortly after I posted it and just had to spiff it up.  Nothing much is different, so those who have already read this don't need to reread.  Basically I just cut down on semicolons (egad, I should impose a limit on myself on just how many semicolons I can legitimately use in a fic!), broke up some of the horrendously long paragraphs, and refined the piece overall.  It kinda needed it, and you kind readers deserve the best.  Don't you agree?  ^.^;

glossary:

onmitsu = what are more commonly known today as "ninja" (Personally, I feel "ninja" has been so often, so carelessly used that "onmitsu" delivers much more significance to the average reader.)

ofuro = the Japanese bath/toilet

Okashira = "Boss" (such a dry, uninteresting, yucky translation _); how Takeda and the Oniwabanshuu address Aoshi

-sama = no direct English translation, but attributes a very high status and a lot of respect to the other person 

Aa. = informal "yes," sort of a "Yeah."  Aoshi-ism ^.^

kodachi = Aoshi's weapon of choice: shorter than a katana, longer than a wakizashi (which are basically the 2 swords, a long and a short, that samurai use)

White Chrysanthemum

by Mirune Keishiko

At first he thought it was only in his memories.

The evenings tended to do that to him.  The mild chill of the summer nights contrasted sharply with the day's bright heat.  Although his senses remained alert on such uneventful routine tasks as patrolling, his mind easily grew numb, and he would catch himself in the midst of reminiscence.  The near-inaudible rustle of clothing in the halls, the birdcalls that rang out through the gardens in the dead of night...  Before he quite knew it, he would be back in the deceptive stillness of the night-shadowed castle, with great numbers of men and women keeping the ancient watch at his command, molten into the shadows as had been centuries of onmitsu before them.

At such times, it took an effort to remember that they were no longer with him—that they had found their own ways many years before, in the paths of the night or day as they chose; that the cause he had been trained to serve with his life had faded ten years past; that while he had once been privileged to guard the great castle itself, now his battlefield lay only in its suburban shadow—a whitewashed house and sparse gardens haphazardly maintained with soulless wealth.

And so at first he thought he was imagining things, that he was only scenting faceless enemies of battles long past.  But then he realized he was walking through a corridor of wood instead of cold stone, and no clashing steel rang in his ears.

He was at the door to the ofuro.  All was silent within.

Fresh, living blood smells hot and almost sweet, almost sour.  As he burst in past the lock, calling instinctively for Hannya, the scent filled his lungs easily—bright, moist, clean.  All else was a blur to his senses—desperate apologies for inattention, the glitter of a bloodied scalpel, long lustrous black hair, and pale skin soft, too soft against his calloused fingertips—as he lifted her from the bloody bath and lay her limp, naked body not ungently on the floor.  Giving the outraged Takeda calm, clipped answers while Hannya easily shredded a towel into bandages and Beshimi, coolly efficient, applied a coagulating salve refined from a poison.

Despite her current occupation, despite the bitterness with which she remembered her lineage, she was still enough of a doctor to cut well and deep into the veins.  But he was still enough of a warrior to rest assured—many hours later, deep into the night—that she had not lost enough blood, and that she would live.

The scrawny little shrimp of a businessman, now that the scare was over, shifted from fear to anger.  He could smell the stale odor of sweaty, impotent fury all the way from the bottom of the stairway, as he ascended it for the meeting that would ultimately be meaningless:  The ignorant young guard who had failed in his simple task had already been disciplined, and he would likely not dare to fail again.  But orders were orders, no matter what slime issued them.

He faced Takeda in the cavernous den.

 "Okashira, this is inexcusable!  This should have been expected from the beginning!  What have you to say for yourself and your men?"

That he or his Oniwabanshuu should ever have had to answer to a worm like this—

 "The issue has been addressed.  He was not one of us, but one of the newer recruits.  He should never have been placed in such an important position."

 "Oh, so now it's my fault, is it?  I'm still the leader of this organization, and I'm the one keeping your little patchwork group alive—"

 "The 'patchwork group,' as you call it, will be in charge of security in that respect from now on.  Such foolish mistakes will not be repeated."

 "...It damn well better not be, Okashira.  Your beloved team's survival as well as mine depends on her and you know it.  How soon will she be well enough to continue working?"

—with his thin, sharp, dingy smell of sweat and coin metal—

 "If she heals quickly, about a month."

 "A month!  A whole month!"

 "Recovery cannot be rushed, if you want her to resume her earlier rate of production.  A month at least."

—how low indeed they had sunk, these past ten years.

 "...That stupid bitch!  I'll see she pays for this.  Get Beshimi to pump her up with whatever drugs he's got.  I'll give her a month and no more."

It was a relief to enter her room after such a meeting.  For some reason her chambers always smelled like soap—maybe she bathed so often and scrubbed so hard to remove the sticky, oily reek of poppy from her skin.  The fresh, womanly scent was pleasant after Kanryuu's sourness.

She lay quietly on her bed,  her arms bandaged nearly up to her shoulders, pure calm face marred only by a slight furrow between her brows as though she herself were irritated by her own failure, wherever she was.  He sat on the floor across the room from her—he preferred cold, hard surfaces to the cushioned seats that tended to invite sleep—and prepared to keep vigil until morning. 

He had seen her weep so often, when she thought foolishly that no one was watching; had heard her cry out in her room many times, in an agony not quite from Takeda's beatings, in a despair intensified by her own aloneness.  For he knew, as he knew so much else, that she truly was alone in the world.

He had seen for himself the few photographs of her family she kept hidden away deep in her drawers of other papers and things, as though she wanted both to banish them from her sight and to keep them whole and intact at the same time.  He had found her staring from the photographs with bright eyes and set mouth, small chin lifted with somber, innocent pride.  Even at eleven years old, she had grown her hair long and straight.  Her father beside her made an imposing figure, standing ramrod straight with one hand on his daughter's shoulder and the other on his wife's.

How low indeed she had sunk, these past ten years—from the pet of her illustrious father to a common criminal, bullied into servitude by one weak and petty man after another.

He suspected she had been sustained, these past two years, by those precious photographs and the memories they evoked.  It seemed, however, all hope had been eclipsed at last tonight.

If he were at all surprised by what she had done, it was only because he had expected it sooner.

A familiar scratch on the door, then it opened to Hannya, Beshimi, Hyottoko, Shikijou; and the maid looked quite lost and frightened in their midst, padding timidly forward with a tray of food.  He stood up to receive his men's salute.

 "Aoshi-sama.  You will keep the watch for the night?"

 "Aa.  Shikijou, get some rest, you'll take the watch after mine.  The rest of you watch the kitchen, the armory, and the servants.  Others may try the same thing."  Takeda was not an unkind master to Takani Megumi alone.  "Do what you must."

They vanished immediately, leaving only him inside the room, and the faintly trembling maid who was spooning soup into Megumi's slack mouth and trying very hard not to fearfully glance his way.  Ignoring her, he resumed his seat against the wall and laid his kodachi across his lap.  

Soon he was dimly aware that he was lapsing again into reminiscence; but with the stillness of the night, of the quietly perfumed room, of the pallid woman lying on the bed, he gave in to his memories.

Hannya, Beshimi, Hyottoko, Shikijou, four oddly assorted fighters who knew little else but fighting.  Four others waiting only for a new call to revive unforgettable skills.  An old mentor, content now to play the harmless aged pervert in the new era of enlightened peace.  And a smiling, energetic jade-eyed girl, innocently idealizing a way of life that had long ago faded into history and a man whom she still believed would return to her.

Somewhere inside him, he envied the opium woman.

The Okashira, unfortunately, needed to live.

~ owari ~

**A/N.**  Megumi, when we first meet her in both the anime and the manga, mentions having tried to kill herself while working for Takeda.  This is this unworthy one's slightly skewed take on it.  ^.^  And for nitpickers out there, "Okashira" is, rather oddly enough, really how Takeda addresses Aoshi.  The manga is a bit less specific than the anime in terms of the Oniwabanshuu's status with regard to Takeda's drug outfit; in this fic, at any rate, I treat the Oniwabanshuu as hirelings of Takeda as his bodyguards.

And no, those aren't typos.  All those terribly ungrammatical phrases and fragments are deliberate.  (Also the atrocious run-on sentences and "overqualified" nouns, I'm sorry to say.)  My only defense is this:  Angst is emotional, correct English is rational, andnever the twain shall meet.  At least not in my fics.  ^.^

White chrysanthemums mean truth and death—at least according to the 2 different webpages I found.  Which is it?  Or is it both?  Either way, IMHO, it still works. ^.^ 

This was a very hastily written oneshot, spun right off the top of my mind on a very crappy/angsty day.  Why wallow in your misery when you can channel it into a fanfic and share it with the world, right?  Misery loving company and all that.  ^.^;  Well, sorry if I clouded over your day with all this existential gloom and doom...

Now do yourself a favor—go off and find some great humor fic (they're all over the place, really) to perk yourself back up.  ^.^


End file.
